Have you read, Find Your Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New Teachers, by Jennifer Gonzalez from The Cult of Pedagogy?
It’s a beautiful blog post of advice for first-year teachers to find their marigold.
A marigold is someone who protects them, helps them thrive, and encourages their growth-similar to marigolds in a garden with other vegetables.
Jennifer’s marigold blog post has a lot of meaning for me. I have my marigolds and I hold on to them tightly-all while trying to not focus on the walnut trees (colleagues who may suck the life out of you or spread negativity).
How does this fit in with my students?
Well, we’ve been reading Wonder together, and it dawned on me… August has his own marigolds, too!
I decided I wanted to teach my students to find their marigolds while being marigolds for each other. I adapted the blog post for my students and we annotated the text, held structured conversations and wrote a little response to the text about what a marigold is to people. You can find the text here. I also used some of my discussion cards to help facilitate the conversation.
We also made some pretty awesome 3D marigolds that I was able to display on my Rettle Roller.
Since learning about marigolds, my students have been making connections to Wonder using their new marigold and walnut tree language.
I’m also really enjoying our display that reminds my kiddos to be a marigold on the daily.
For a more detailed look on how to make these paper marigolds with Astrobrights paper, check out this step-by-step tutorial.